Constructive complete distributivity. I

Abstract

The relationships, in many cases equivalences, between lattice distributivity, adjunction and continuity have been studied by many authors, for example [1, 3–8, 12, 13, 15, 17–20, 22, 23]. Very roughly, we refer to the following circle of ideas. Let L be an ordered set, and L a class of subsets of L, and suppose that L has a supremum for each element in L. We might say that L has -sups. The ‘distributivity’ we refer to is that of infs over -sups. The ‘adjunction’ is that given by a left adjoint to the map V: L→L. Now the latter has a left adjoint if and only if it preserves infs, and this means roughly that the -sup of an intersection is an inf of -sups. When one does succeed in identifying the -sup of an intersection as a -sup of infs, one has an instance of distributivity.